Mauthausen

We drove maybe 3 hours to upper Austria to one of the concentration camps in Mauthausen. The camp was open from the Anschluss in 1938 (when Germany was welcomed into Austria) until two weeks before the end of WWII, making Mauthausen one of the longest running camps.

The forty of us students separated into two groups and followed our respective tour guides around the camp. The first thing we visited was a soccer field where Nazi officers played just outside the camp's wall. Prisoners would watch the games sometimes. Prisoners of war from Spain who used to play soccer were granted extra rations and rest so they could play. I don't need to go into the contrast between a soccer field and a gas chamber.

Our guide showed us monuments, and other commemorative things-plaques, pictures, flowers, etc.

He told us about the prisoners experiences in the camp--what it took to survive, which showers were real and which used Zyklon B to kill 120 prisoners at a time.

Michelle and I separated form our group to explore the gas chambers. I wasn't really thinking about what happened where I stood, or what it meant or how I felt...You just have this physical reaction to the room. You tense-up, breathing is uncomfortable, cover your mouth with your hand, step tentatively, don’t touch anything. Every movement is an effort to avoid rubbing against some wall or door or thought. Crouching through the low door makes you feel vulnerable. There’s a room with a table, the plaque is going to say prisoners had teeth extracted here, your body shrinks away, avoiding the table as your eyes read on. It’s not nausea, but it’s close.

Our tour guide thought the world used to be black and white, because he had grown up with old photographs.

Walking around the camp with Michelle and Nicole.

It was so cold. So, so cold. How cold would it have been at night, during roll-call, standing in thin uniforms for hours in the snow? 

I realized I would not have survived in the camps. I realized I would not have wanted to survive. The ones who made it had to steal other's bread, they had to become Kappos and beat one another--those who survived often did the most monstrous things in the camps to their own people. 

Mauthausen began as a work camp because it adjoins a quarry. It is home to the infamous "stairs of death", where prisoners were forced to carry stones, up to 110 pounds, up the 186 stairs - one behind the other. Exhausted prisoners collapsed in front of the other prisoners in the line, and then fell on top of the other prisoners...domino effect; the first prisoner falling onto the next, and so on, all the way down the stairs. 

Domino effect. Death-domino-effect. Skeletal dominoes. The clack of the stones on the stairs probably even sounded like dominoes.

At the top of the stairs there is a ledge overlooking the cliff the stairs windup. At the bottom of the cliff is a deep, deep pond. Prisoners were made to line up in rows, one behind the other--and the second line would push the first down the cliff--prisoners dying from bashing their skulls against jags and juts in the cliff, or from drowning in the pond. Line after line. I looked into the pond with Nicole. It would have been really beautiful, especially now in the fall...I would never push Nicole. I just don't understand. Why would you let pushing someone to their death be the last thing you do...

Isn't that even worse than your coming death? Knowing the last impact you have on Earth is pushing someone over a cliff. I would have hugged the person around the waist and jumped--but maybe at that point everyone would have pushed, maybe by then they were so broken it didn't matter. I don't know.

The camp was primarily for prisoners of war. The camp also housed homosexuals, Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirables". Homosexuals, after liberation were still not welcome to commemoration ceremonies until 1983. Can you imagine surviving Mauthausen, surviving that kind of hatred and discrimination only to still be despised for 40 more years? Seeing Mauthausen reminds me humanity is seriously flawed, but it's easy to compartmentalize those flaws into old prejudices--the story about homosexuals not being invited to ceremonies about themselves, about their experiences and their survival until 1983 clearly demonstrates society hasn't advanced enough. Isn't that awful? Can you imagine surviving and not being remembered? 5 years in Mauthausen, and then 40 without recognition. The attitude implies they may as well have died. 

Michelle and I were the first people back on the bus. I hadn't cried in the camp--it's just shocking, and sickening...the sadness really comes when you apply what you see to you and your family. Talking about our families on the bus, though--that's when all my emotions kind of broke through. Michelle and I both miss our moms a lot. A lot, a lot. I already said I wouldn't survive the camps, but without friends and family, I wouldn't have even tried. It became so clear that being there, surrounded by death and without people to love and be loved by...push me off the cliff, I don't care. 

Mauthausen was an important experience. This Thanksgiving I feel the most appreciative I've ever been for my health, my family, my friends, my home, my country, my creativity, this century, our history, time... 

I really don't know what else to say. I can't say "Mauthausen was good." because, you know, it's a concentration camp--but I'm really glad I went. I'm really glad I have great friends here to talk with about it, and I'm really thankful that I'm able to go to places like Mauthausen as a visitor, with friends and family waiting for me outside.